


For Future Reference

by propinquitine



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, McShep Match Challenge 2008, and some pining for the Library of Alexandria as a concept, minor spoilers for s4, musings on 'gate translations and alien literary traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-05
Updated: 2008-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24966823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitine/pseuds/propinquitine
Summary: Browsing in a well-organized library can help you find things you didn’t even know you were looking for.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	For Future Reference

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to winkingstar for the so-close-to-the-deadline-it's-ridiculous beta duties.

The gate address for P3X-771 was listed in a practically empty file in the city's databases. The entry contained only the planetary designation, the gate address, and a single cross-reference to "index." It was intriguingly cryptic, and after promising Colonel Carter that he wouldn't touch any strange crystal things, John led his team through the gate.

The planet, like so many of the sites the Ancients had selected as gate-worthy, was cool and green, and fairly densely forested. "All right, everyone, keep an eye out for anything unusual," John said, holding his P-90 aimed generally at the woods in front of them.

"Yes, Colonel, as long as you promise to resist the urge to touch anything particularly shiny that we happen to come across," Rodney responded, walking next to him with his nose buried in the scanner. "As delightful as the whole dream-sharing experience was, I'd prefer not to be frightened into cardiac arrest again, if at all possible."

"I thought you'd said it cured you," Ronon said as they began to climb a steep incline.

John could see the trees thinning out toward the top of the rise. "Cured you?" he asked. Rodney was turning pinkish already, though whether it was from exertion, the cool air, or the conversation, he couldn't tell.

"Yeah, cured him of his nightmares,” Ronon said. “Now, instead of getting eaten by whales, there's just a lot of rowing. Right, McKay?"

"That's the last time I sit with you in the mess hall when I've got insomnia," Rodney huffed, face red now. John was glad they were nearing the top of the hill.

Rodney continued to grumble under his breath as they approached the summit, a litany of imprecations against loud-mouthed Satedans and fervent, if muted, promises never to share from his stash of Tim-Tams again, ever. John was amused. He didn't really get why Rodney was so worked up--maybe he'd revealed some particularly embarrassing dream (the man was never more talkative than when he was sleepy), but since Ronon didn't look like he was actually going to divulge anything, John just let himself enjoy the patter of Rodney's annoyance.

As the team crested the ridge, John grinned over at Rodney, who suddenly seemed to realize that he'd been talking out loud the entire time. He closed his mouth with an audible click of teeth, and then opened it again immediately to say, "Yes. Well. My point being that things disclosed in confidence should remain confidential."

John was saved from having to come up with a response to that comment by Teyla's surprised gasp. "Look. There," she said, pointing down into the valley that the ridge had been concealing. An orderly complex of massive, connected buildings shone in the sunlight. The light was reflected back up at them oddly--not the way it would glare off of stone or glitter on glass; the buildings seemed to shimmer, almost. John would bet anything they were shielded somehow.

"I wonder what this is doing out here," John mused aloud. Rodney, who'd pointed his scanner toward the complex immediately, shook his head. It was the "anomalous readings" shake, not the "no readings at all, crazy man," one, so John was reassured that they probably weren't hallucinating things.

Teyla and Ronon were still staring raptly at the shimmering buildings. "The layout of the buildings, it looks just like the stories--" Teyla began.

"I thought it was just a legend," Ronon cut in.

"But if it wasn’t, imagine what--"

"You really think it could be?" Ronon asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Think it could be what?" Rodney demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"The Archive," Teyla and Ronon said, in unison.

They made their way down to the buildings quickly, Ronon hacking open a trail for them as Teyla breathlessly explained. "The Archive was maintained for millennia by a dedicated group of curators. Their goal was to provide a place to store the history of all of the peoples of the galaxy."

"So, it's like a museum?" John asked, ducking under a branch.

"More like a library. The archivists knew that they would quickly run out of space if they tried to preserve objects as well as texts."

"But how does that work?" Rodney asked. "I mean, most of the people we've met, they might be functionally literate, but they don't exactly have great repositories of accumulated knowledge."

"You do recall, Rodney, the number of times we've been honored with a performance of a people's poetry or storytelling?" Teyla's voice was commanding--Rodney had damn well better recall. "As you no doubt have realized, many of the peoples in this galaxy rely on oral transmission of their history and stories. It is often . . . impractical to rely on the written word."

"If your whole society's gonna have to pick up and run at any minute, it's a lot easier to grab a storyteller than an entire library." Ronon grinned over his shoulder at them, and then pushed through the last of the underbrush into the clearing around the Archive.

The shimmering shield was still there, faint in the different angle of light, and Rodney ran his scanner along a section of it. "Huh," he said.

"Gonna need a little more than 'huh' to go on, Rodney," John said. He knew Rodney would have a full explanation, but bantering was one of the highlights of his job.

"It's a shield, definitely, but it's calibrated to let humans pass through." Rodney looked up at him. "Go on, try it."

John knew Rodney wouldn't be telling him to do that unless he really was sure (not after the whole time dilation mess with Teer, anyway), so he took a breath and stepped through. There was a mild tingle on his exposed skin, but it faded almost before he'd registered it, so he motioned the others through.

Once they were all on the other side, Rodney asked, "So, how do they get to books and an archive, then? If there's no recorded history?"

Teyla smiled. "I will admit, most legends of the archivists describe them as very odd individuals, indeed; travelers who go from planet to planet interviewing a people's historians and collecting copies of texts. Those who told me of them as a child did not quite see the use of such behavior. They have not been heard from for several generations."

She frowned up at the large door of the building in front of them. It had looked slightly bigger than the surrounding buildings from the top of the ridge, but they were all equally spaced around a central courtyard, so John couldn't really tell if there was a main building.

"Yeah, I always thought they were legends," Ronon shrugged, "something my teachers would talk about, you know. Wishful thinking."

"This might not even be the place," Rodney put in.

All right, time for some leadership. "Let's check it out," John said, reaching out and opening the door.

The Archive sure felt like a library, John thought as the team filed into the antechamber. The air inside was still and stale, cut through with shafts of sunlight streaming from the high transom windows. The room was small, containing only a square table with a thick book resting on it, and a lot of dust. On the other side of the table, there was a door that led to what John assumed were the stacks. It was very quiet.

"Not exactly grandiose, is it?" he asked. When everyone turned to look at him, he shrugged. "I just thought, repository of the accumulated knowledge of the Pegasus galaxy, might be a little flashier."

"The Archive was never intended to be a public attraction," Teyla answered. "Its location was kept secret, the gate address known only to the archivists. It was thought that this would protect it: situated on a deserted planet, with little gate traffic, it would not present a tempting target to the Wraith."

"Any idea what happened to the guys who used to run this place?" John asked, trailing a finger through the dust on the table. "It's been a while since housekeeping's been through."

"I do not know for certain, but I suspect it was the usual." John quirked an eyebrow at her. "Time," she said. "And Wraith."

"And if all of the archivists are killed, the address is lost forever, and the entire project is pointless," Rodney sniped.

Ronon reached over and clapped him on the shoulder, hard. "Not lost forever, McKay. We're here, aren't we?"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure they were intending just this, to wait for an expedition travel three million light-years from another galaxy, wake the lost city of the Ancients, turn on the database, and after four years get so bored that they start recklessly gating to addresses with no information. That is a truly brilliant plan." Rodney held out his scanner. "I suppose it is impressive that their shields are still functional. The power signal's weak, a few floors below us, but it's persistent."

He moved toward the rear door, concentrating on the scanner. John shot a hand out and gripped his shoulder, stopping him. "Hey, Rodney, no wandering off. I don't think they allow unattended astrophysicists in the library."

"What, because book worms will eat me?" Rodney asked, then paled. "Oh, god, this galaxy probably has bookworms the size of Buicks." He looked at John with wide eyes. _Blue_ , John thought. _Very, very blue. I should probably be saying something right now._. This had happened to him before: every so often ( _increasingly often_ his brain chimed in, _pretty much all the time, now_ ), he'd find himself completely distracted by some feature of Rodney’s. Never when it would be dangerous, never when he was really focused on something, but when his mind was given the opportunity to wander, lately it had been veering directly toward Rodney. John told himself it was just the result of spending so much time together.

"I believe," Teyla spoke up, leafing through the text on the table and breaking John’s awkward silence, "that this book gives the location of the various collections in the Archive. It lists groups by gate address, followed by a set of symbols I have not seen before."

"Here, let me see," Rodney pulled the book toward him. "Okay, there were eight buildings in the complex, aligned along the cardinal directions, each one has ten floors above ground, two, possibly three subbasements, so that means . . . ." He looked up, and John smirked at him. Rodney in puzzle-solving mode was always fun. "What? I'm observant!" John nodded earnestly. "I observe! Anyway, it looks like the Athosian section is in this building, up one level, on the south side. And . . . " --he flipped toward the back-- "Sateda's in building three, on the ninth floor, which I might point out will require climbing an obscene number of stairs, but you'll probably want to go anyway?" Rodney glanced at Ronon, who looked surprised, John thought, even though his face hadn't moved. "Of course you will," Rodney continued, turning back to the directory, "people like that sort of thing."

The Athosian section took up most of the southern wing of the second floor. Teyla explained that the Athosians had once had a lively literary tradition, centuries ago, during a long period of relative freedom from Wraith attack, and as they walked the long lines of bookshelves, she pointed out dozens of authors whose work they'd thought had been lost forever. The books seemed to be grouped by subject matter, though John supposed it could just be that "Stories About the Wraith", "How We Survived a Wraith Attack" and "People We Lost to the Wraith" were pervasive cross-cultural themes.

As they explored the stacks, Teyla grew quieter, taking time to pause and read titles, pulling volumes from the shelves and paging through them. Ronon was quiet, too, though that was hardly unusual. He'd taken up a spot by the window and was looking out at the rest of the complex. John would bet that he had a good view of Building Three.

"Hey, c'mon," he said quietly to Rodney. "Let's go check out another section."

"What happened to no wandering off?" Rodney asked, though he moved along easily enough when John nudged his shoulder.

"That was before we'd checked the place out."

"Oh, and having seen all of, what, one stairwell and a few book cases, you've decided it's safe?" Rodney volleyed back, easily.

"Well, I think we've established that the dust won't kill us, at least. That seems to be the biggest threat here." John dragged his finger along the inscribed woodwork at the end of one of the shelves. "There's not as much as I would've expected."

"Yes, the whole complex seems remarkably well-preserved. It must be the shield, or whatever was creating the field we saw surrounding the buildings." Rodney rubbed along his jaw as he thought, thumb backtracking to rub at the small mole there, the way it always did when he was idly speculating. John wasn't sure when he'd first noticed that. "Though, the field let us through with no trouble, so it might be keyed to let in certain types of life-forms and keep out vermin, and the elements. I'll know more once I can take a look at that generator," he finished, dropping his hand.

John realized he'd been staring at the motion of Rodney's thumb the entire time. "Yeah," he said, snapping his eyes up to Rodney's in a move that reminded him somewhat uncomfortably of talking to women in bars when he was (much) younger. At least this time he hadn't gotten the "my eyes are up here" lecture. "This must be boring for you."

Rodney frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"This," John said, gesturing at the shelves. They'd wandered into the east wing and were standing in the section devoted to the people of Taita, who had apparently been no less prolific than the Athosians in their publishing heyday.

"'This'--you mean books, Colonel? Yes, I managed to earn two Ph.D.s before the age of 26 because I find _books_ to be very boring," Rodney said sardonically.

"Yeah, but these are mostly history and folklore and stuff. Not really your preferred reading," John said, pulling a book entitled _The Journey of Scillit, and His_ Narat _Jiel_ from the shelf. He'd had the gate's translation capabilities explained to him in detail, including the reasons that some words never translated, but John still secretly believed that whoever’d written the translation algorithm had introduced a random-error generator, just to keep things interesting.

"Well, we can't all be aficionados of Russian literature," Rodney replied, bending down to pull a thick volume from the shelf of science-related texts. John caught himself staring again, this time at the flex of Rodney's thigh, visible through the worn fabric of his black BDUs as he straightened. He looked good. Strong legs, well-muscled and firm, but probably still forgiving to the touch, what with Rodney's propensity for double desserts, and . . . what had he been thinking about, again? Right -- Rodney looked healthy. It was important for a team leader to keep apprised of his teammates' physical condition.

John shook his head, trying to clear it. "And if I'd said, 'Gee, Rodney, you must be thrilled by all of this!', you'd have gone off on a rant about English majors and primitive, physics-free societies," he pointed out.

"First, I'd have mocked you for sounding like a teenage girl," Rodney smirked.

They settled onto the floor with their books, shucking their tac vests and leaning back against the opposing bookcases. John figured Teyla would be a while; he tried to imagine what it would be like to suddenly discover thousands of years of your people's history, not lost like you'd thought, but neatly organized by subject matter and author. He tried to imagine what it would be like for your people to even _have_ thousands of years of history. His father had cared about the family history just enough to make sure that everyone knew they were old money, and his mom's family was across the map--he was pretty sure that one of his grandparents had been an immigrant, or a first-generation American, or something, but they'd never really talked about it. Since joining the military, his almost five years in Atlantis was the longest he'd spent in any one place (if you didn't count, you know, picking up and flying the city to a new planet).

He must've had a weird look on his face, because Rodney stretched out a foot and nudged his leg. "John?" he asked, voice soft and low.  
  
"Just thinking about my life as a rootless American," he said indifferently. John was starting to remember why he'd always found libraries a little bit unsettling: the quiet stillness has nothing on gunfire for drowning out an inner monologue.

Rodney narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying John's attempts at a blasé attitude, but he turned back to his primer on Taitan science. He left his foot settled against John's calf, though. That was nice.

Rather than encourage his thoughts down that particular rabbit hole again, John cracked the spine on _The Journey of Scillit_. He flinched at the loud sound, imagining a horde of zombie librarians rising from the dead to come yell at him for mistreating the materials.

The story of Scillit's journey seemed to be written in some kind of verse, though the gate translation apparently didn't preserve meter. Or maybe the Taitans had written it in blank verse--either way, John was pretty sure he could add the linguists, the literature buffs, and probably Chuck the gate tech to the list of people who were going to be really excited to hear about the Archive.

John scanned several pages. _Here is the story of Scillit, strong of heart, fleet of foot, and true. Here is the story of his_ narat _Jiel, swift of mind, sharp of tongue, his constant companion_. Then, _. . . and Scillit took up the_ barsha _of power, reluctant though he was, and lead his people, his Jiel of honeyed hair at his side, friend and counsel, his constant companion, and Scillit felt his hope-heart grow_. And further on, _Jiel took up the fallen Scillit's shield, stood over him and stood for him, facing down the ravening beast, and Scillit knew his_ narat _at last_.

"Huh," John said quietly. Rodney looked up at him from the science text; he looked like he was sincerely engrossed in it. "Nah, it's nothing, they just ruin the climax of the first part in the title.” John shrugged. “It's a love story, and the whole 'will they or won't they' thing is kind of ruined when the book's name is, 'Yeah, they totally do.'"

Rodney chuckled. "Well, maybe the point's not whether they're going to, but what they do when they get there."

"You mean, sex?"

That got him a snort. "Yes, because of course that's the ultimate expression of every relationship. I'm sure the Taitans detailed it graphically." Rodney perked up at the thought. "Oh, hey, did they?" he asked, leaning forward eagerly.

John laughed. "I thought I was the one with the prurient interest, here." Rodney just looked at him expectantly. "I haven't run across anything, yet, but I'll let you know if I do. Go back to your book. Is it any good?"

Rodney nodded. "Surprisingly, yes. It must have been someone's textbook, it's covered in annotations and comments, but it looks like the Taitans were on the verge of figuring out the laws of motion."

"Newton's Laws?"

"Well, I doubt they would have called them that, but yes, for the most part." Rodney shrugged. "I mean, obviously the Laws represent a flawed, earth-bound, utterly unsophisticated understanding of the universe, and they never would have been able to grasp even the most basic concepts of quantum mechanics with them, but still--they were trying."

"All on their own? No cribbing ideas from the Ancients?" John asked. It seemed like most of the more scientifically advanced societies they met were working from a hodge-podge of refurbished Ancient tech and appropriated theory.

"No, not as far as I can tell. There's no sign of any Ancient influence in the math," and suddenly Rodney was shifting, scooting around so that he was sitting next to John, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. "See, look, here," he asked, pointing to a page.

John tried to concentrate on Rodney's voice, rather than the heat emanating from his body or the feel of him pressed all along John's right side. Doing that was much more difficult than understanding the equations on the page in front of him. "Oh, hey, you're right," he said, leaning closer to the book; if that just happened to wedge him tighter against Rodney, well, scientific curiosity demanded it. "They're just about there with those, if they just get that constant out of the way."

Rodney nodded. "Yes, and they've got pages and pages of experimental data. They really were pursuing this rigorously."

"Good ol' 'dropping a ball from the top of a tower' physics, huh? Not exactly string theory--"

"But an entirely necessary step towards a sound theoretical model of the universe, and it's entirely organic to this galaxy," Rodney finished, grinning at him.

John had to grin back. "This really gets to you, doesn't it? The idea of a fledgling scientific community, only centuries away from starting up a Mensa chapter."

"Well, I'd pretty much written off the thought of finding anything other than scientific scavengers and nuclear-crazed Genii in this galaxy, which I suppose is understandable, given the constant threat of the Wraith, but it’s still somewhat disappointing, so to find this?" He held up the book. "It's amazing. And while I truly doubt there's anything in this place that would actually advance _our_ understanding of the universe, as a resource to Pegasus, it's quite remarkable. Or, it would have been, if it hadn't gotten lost."

John looked at his hand where it rested on his leg. If he moved it an inch to his right, it would be on Rodney's. "Library of Alexandria," he blurted. He could see Rodney's puzzled look easily from the corner of his eye, they were sitting that close. "I'd always wondered," he continued, pulling at a loose thread on the outside seam of his pantleg. His knuckles dragged against Rodney's BDUs; his earlier conjecture regarding the relative softness and firmness of Rodney's leg was so far confirmed, but John could tell that his brain was ready to devise further experiments at a moment's notice. "What would've happened if the Library of Alexandria hadn't been burned?"

"Which time? Library fires were incredibly common back then." Before John could work up the appropriate scowl to that, Rodney went on, "But I suppose you mean the general principle, what it would have meant for scientific progress if all of that information hadn't been destroyed?" John nodded. "That's one of those questions I'd always put aside as unanswerable and, therefore, incredibly frustrating."

"But now with all this." John craned his neck, taking in the bookcases towering above the two of them, each shelf lined with hundreds of books, hundreds of bookcases on every floor in every building--it was awesomely overwhelming.

"Yes, this does open up a number of questions," Rodney said, at which point John realized that his twisting around to look up at the shelves had practically landed him in Rodney's lap. He flailed a bit getting himself resituated, Rodney kindly helping him with a firm hand to his shoulder.

John knew he was flushing red, and cast about for something distracting to say. "We should scan it," he tried, realizing that he'd been thinking something along these lines ever since Teyla and Ronon had first said "Archive." "It'd be good to make a backup, and the social scientists will go nuts over all the data. We can send the anthropologists out to collect updates from people, and write down oral histories. Make a copy for research, and a copy to store here. I doubt it'll take much arm-twisting for them," John said.

Rodney looked thoughtful, and, thankfully, diverted. "Hmm, yes, good idea. It'll take them a long time to scan all of this, and they'll finally legitimate their presence."

"On the expedition?"

"In life, actually. And maybe--" he broke off, unsure.

"Maybe?” John prompted.

“Maybe we include us? Our history, the expedition, the gate teams, everything we’ve done here so far.”

John thought about that. It made a lot of sense. “Well, we’ve certainly had an influence, here. We should check with Teyla, make sure it wouldn’t be weird, but yeah.” He nodded at Rodney. “It’s a good idea. I’d like to think there was a permanent record of us. All of us,” he added, smiling at Rodney.

“And I was thinking,” Rodney started rubbing his jaw again. John was pretty sure he was doing it on purpose, this time. "We can shield it, or at least hook up a spare naquadah generator to whatever they've got going already. It seems to be doing a pretty good job."

"We have a spare naquadah generator?" Back and forth, John tracked Rodney's thumb on his jaw. He really deserved a medal for being able to keep up a conversation at a time like this.

"Well, not so much 'spare' as 'not doing anything more important than this'. Botany will probably bitch and moan when I take theirs, but that's just one of the benefits of being me." He smiled conspiratorially at John, just one corner of his mouth turning up, and John felt the familiar rush of mild-but-vindictive pleasure that he always got when Rodney slighted the department formerly associated with Katie Brown. It hadn't faded in the slightest when she shipped back to Earth, which, now that John was thinking about it (now that John was apparently _thinking_ , full-out, about a lot of things), really should have given him some kind of warning.

"Now," Rodney said, interrupting the epiphany that John wasn't quite sure he was finished having yet, "I believe you owe me some porn." He looked at John expectantly.

John's brain began very helpfully supplying images, flashes of flesh and hands and blue blue eyes, with adjectives like _red_ and _wet_ and _thick_ and, oh fuck, this was his epiphany, all right. "What?" he croaked.

"Your book." Rodney, the bastard, gave him a full-body nudge. "You said you'd let me know when," he looked at the cover, "'Scillit and his narat Jiel' got to know each other biblically."

Rodney leered, which looked ridiculous and helped John regain some of his composure. He flipped through the next chapter, in which Jiel continued to ward off the beast until Scillit could recover and kick the thing's ass. Then there was a lot of travelling, and Scillit sighing after Jiel's honeyed hair and counting the days until he could formally request Jiel-his-constant-companion's hand in narat-hood.

John skipped a chunk of pages at once, turning to the last quarter of the book and a page that began with _broke his kiss with Jiel and pulled his_ narat _into a close embrace, reveling in the feel of his_ narat _’s hardness against his answering own_. "Whoa," John said, eyes widening.

"Find something good?" Rodney asked.

John looked up at him. God, Rodney's eyes were blue. "Uh, so Jiel's a guy. Too. I mean, they both are. Guys."

Rodney held his gaze, when John would have really preferred to drop his eyes and rub nervously at the back of his neck. Well, maybe preferred. Or not preferred, not at all, and this was why he hated feelings. "And you’re just now realizing this? Before I despair over your seeming lack of reading comprehension, I'll repeat my question, John. Did you find something good?"

A hundred different responses ran through John's mind: you can't ask and I can't tell, laugh it off, shut him down, turn bright red and run in the other direction (though that hadn't ended well with Nate when he was thirteen), ask him to marry him (and that hadn't ended well with Nancy when he was thirty). "Fuck that," he muttered, and pulled Rodney across the scant six inches separating them into a bruising kiss.

Rodney, the complete and utter bastard, was not caught at all off-guard. He wound his right arm around John's shoulder, threading his hand into John's hair like he'd been just waiting for an excuse. His left hand stroked down John's side, pausing briefly on his ribs, his waist, his hip, before sliding up his back and pulling John even closer. And his mouth, god, his busy mouth opened right up, relieving some of the pressure from John's enthusiastic but inexpert man-handling, his tongue sliding out to lick delicately at John's lower lip, and John kind of hated him, just for a moment, for how good that felt.

He put his hands on Rodney's shoulders and pushed back. "What the hell, Rodney?" he demanded.

Rodney blinked. "What? No, wait, you kissed me!"

"I know!" John wasn't in the habit of discussing his feelings, particularly not at such close distance, and definitely not when the object of those feelings was playing with the hair at the back of his neck. He decided to go for it anyway. It had been that kind of day. "I kissed you, I _kissed_ you, Rodney, and then all of a sudden, you were kissing me, and then-- then . . . " He trailed off, the talking thing not really working out, and settled for a nice solid furrowed brow.

"And then you decided to stop and put on your grumpy old man face?" Rodney looked bewildered, which made John feel better. And he was _not_ old. "Look," Rodney continued, "it's not overly complex: I kiss you, you kiss me, we kiss each other, it's your basic verb conjugation, but significantly hotter--"

John cut him off with another kiss. This could easily become his favorite way to interrupt Rodney, he thought, as he brought both hands up to cup Rodney's face, stroking a thumb along his cheekbone and nipping lightly at his still-moving lips. "Oh, very mature," Rodney murmured, but he seemed quite willing to go along, shifting his lower body so that he faced John more squarely. John took the opportunity to straddle Rodney's legs, which introduced some pleasant friction into the mix, and also gave him a distinct edge in the height differential. John could feel his pulse racing as Rodney slipped a hand under his t-shirt, and he figured he could use whatever advantage he could get.

As Rodney traced up his back, John broke their kiss and mouthed his way down to Rodney's jaw, where stubble rubbed weirdly and wonderfully against his lips. He licked and bit a gentle line back to Rodney's ear, pausing to drop a kiss on that damn mole, and nosed into the edge of Rodney's hairline. Rodney shuddered, nails scratching lightly at John's back. "You bastard," John muttered, breath hitching.

"Your sweet nothings leave a little something to be desired." Rodney proved his own statement for a lie by arching into John's touch.

"You knew about this," John kissed along Rodney's cheekbone, "you knew about _us_ ," he met Rodney's lips, and they kissed, deep and slow, tongues moving sinuously against each other. Breaking for air, John finished, "and you didn't tell me." He was breathing hard.

"To be fair," Rodney said, running his free hand through the hair at John's temple, "I only figured it out recently."

"How recently is 'recently'?" John asked, shifting a bit from where he knelt over Rodney's lap. His knees were starting to protest, but he was not _old_ , dammit, and he certainly wasn't going to be getting up any time soon.

Rodney looked at his watch, absentmindedly stroking his temple with his thumb as he did so. "Hmm, maybe twenty minutes? Half an hour?"

Oh. Well, that wasn't too bad. John grinned. "Still, you should've told me when you figured it out. Or showed me," he said, ducking his head for another deep kiss.

"I imagine Teyla and Ronon might have had something to say about that." Rodney had both of his hands up the back of John's shirt now, and was just stroking his lower back over and over again. It felt fantastic, and maybe John hadn't been the only one to be taunted by innocuous body parts.

"Speaking of, we should probably get back to them," John said, squeezing gently at Rodney's shoulders (nicely muscled, and, oh, right, he still had an extensive thigh survey to complete). The satisfied groan that Rodney gave at the light pressure made John add "full body massage" to his list of Things We Need to Do ASAP. It was really cool to have things other than "flee from the Wraith" and "don't die on missions" on that list, and he could only see it getting longer.

"Yeah, you're probably right. Mission and all," Rodney said, smiling wistfully at him. Rodney looked down; John couldn't see his face from his vantage point. "I can't--" Rodney began.

John leaned down quickly and kissed him quiet. "Yeah, you can," he breathed against Rodney's lips. "Whatever it is, you definitely can, _we_ can, we'll figure something out." Another kiss, and Rodney was definitely responding, which had to be a good sign, didn't it? "Or, we won't, if you mean that you can't let people find out, or whatever." He sighed out a breath in a long rush, squeezing his eyes shut. "We'll figure something out."

Rodney ran his warm hand up and down John's back again. "Actually, I was just going to say, 'I can't believe we've been making out in a library.'"

"Oh." John pulled back to look at Rodney, considering. "Yeah, the zombie librarians probably wouldn't be too happy with us." At Rodney's incredulous look, he shrugged. "Just something I was thinking about earlier. We should probably re-shelve the books, too," he said, nodding to where the two volumes lay abandoned on the floor. “They’d get real upset about that.”

"Your brain is a very strange place." Rodney looked almost proud as he said that, which John found oddly touching. He could tell he was grinning pretty goofily, but that was okay, since Rodney was doing the same thing. Bright-eyed and flushed, Rodney just looked _happy_ , and John had to kiss him for that. Rodney apparently had a similar idea, so when they both moved their heads forward quickly, they met in a somewhat painful clash of teeth and noses.

"Ow, okay, I think our magical moment of gymnastically improbable making-out has officially ended," Rodney groused, finally pulling his hands out from under John's shirt, and rubbing at his nose.

John leaned forward and kissed him lightly, right on the tip of his nose. He pulled back with a smile, which only deepened when he saw Rodney's expression: equal parts giddy and exasperated, and pinking up all over.

"That is not fair," Rodney complained, batting at John with his hands to get him to stand up. John unfolded slowly, trying to keep his groan as quiet as possible and extending a hand down to Rodney once his knees would let him straighten up again. Rodney took it, continuing, "With your face, and, and the leaning, and now we've got to go climb nine flights of stairs so Ronon can look at thousands of years of history from his dead planet, which we should do, but all I really want is to go back home and try this lying down."

"Lying down?" John asked, intrigued.

"Mmm, yes," Rodney looked down at where their hands were still joined. "If you'd be interested, that is."

John squeezed his hand, giving it a little shake. "Very interested. It sounds like a brilliant plan."

"Well, genius, you know," Rodney said, looking pleased.

"And here I was thinking we'd try it standing up," he said, adding, "Ronon's going to need his privacy, too."

"Also a very good plan," Rodney said, looking at his lips and swaying a little closer.

"I don't like to brag," John murmured, leaning in to meet him, "but I could've been in Mensa."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2008 McShep Match, Team Home, prompt "chapter and verse"; originally posted here: https://mcshep-match.livejournal.com/50659.html .
> 
> (Also, it's very apparent to me on re-reading this in 2020 that I wrote this while studying the then-still-in-progress _Author's Guild v. Google Books_ case in law school. Nerd!)


End file.
